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Why I left.

06 Saturday Jan 2018

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I’ve been meaning to write this blog for a while; it seems important to note the reason why I finally left; especially because I wrote a blog about few years ago talking about why I stayed.

Domestic abuse and violence is something that we rarely talk about. It’s kept hidden by both the perpetrator and also the victim, as well as family members and friends who know about it. It’s a shameful secret that feels in no one’s interests to uncover. The abuser will go to extraordinary lengths to hide it and the abused is so scared of the consequences in terms of further abuse, of telling people that they often become complicit in covering up and excusing their abuse. That’s what I did; I explained away the bruises through a variety of accidents that even to the most naive listener must have seemed less and less plausible; tripping down the stairs; walking into a door; shutting my leg in a car door you name the accident, I’d probably used it as an excuse to explain away the broken nose, the cuts and the times I winced in pain from hidden injuries.

And no one ever really questioned it. Like no one ever questioned the way I no longer could come and go as I pleased or the way I never had any cash. My abuser had an excuse for everything; I couldn’t be trusted with money, I’d lost my purse, I would disappear for hours with the car if I went out alone. He even picked my clothes out for me on a daily basis. I had to wear whatever he wanted me to, even if it was filthy or inappropriate for the day ahead. I wore it or I was punished. And punishment could take many forms.

If I was lucky it would just be a punch to the side of the head. There were times when I was kicked down the stairs to our flat, beaten with the hoover pipe in the stomach whilst pregnant. Others when he would act as if everything was OK, but I knew it wasn’t. The tension in the air would be palpable. He would just be waiting for the time when I least expected it, to pounce; to dish out whatever form of punishment he felt I deserved that day. It might be as simple as withholding the cash for sanitary products so that I was forced to roll up wads of tissue into makeshift sanitary towels. Anything really to make me feel so humiliated and grateful when he showed a tiny sliver of humanity to me when he eventually gave me the money to buy some tampons.

Other times the punishment might be to lock me out of the house half naked when there was snow outside; getting enjoyment from my begging to be let in.

Sometimes I didn’t need to actually do anything to have a storm of torture unleashed on me. I could have done everything asked of me and think that everything was fine. I’d trod on eggshells all day and managed to not break any of them, but someone would piss him off in the pub and so I’d have to pay the price for some perceived slight. Sometimes I would know it was coming, so I’d run myself ragged trying to stop what in reality was inevitable; I’d bend over backwards to be perfect, to do the right thing that would shift his mindset and stop the hell that I could feel was intended for me when we got home, but it would very rarely work. I would be forced to leave the pub with him knowing that the beating was coming. Preparing myself for it. Being ready.

Other times it would come from absolutely nowhere. I might be cooking dinner, and he’d come into the kitchen and decide that I was cooking wrong and the next thing I’d know the pot of potatoes cooking on the stove would be flying at my head, boiling water and all.

And there was never any apology. Never even any acceptance that he had done anything; let alone done anything wrong. He broke my nose twice and would ask the next day how it happened. Denying any knowledge when I tried to remind him that he’d punched me; saying if he’d done that I’d have worse injuries than a black eye or a broken nose or fingers.

He also abused me sexually. In ways that 16 years later I am too full of shame and disgust to speak about publicly.

And yet despite all this I still thought I loved him. That he loved me. Somehow I deserved this. And in reality he was all I had. He had isolated me from all of the people who could have helped me. Either by stopping me seeing them or by turning their thoughts about me against me. He continually told people what a terrible person I was, how untrustworthy and sneaky I was and eventually they believed him.

He would play little mind games with me. He would give me money to buy things in a pub full of people and then take it back when no one was looking. He’d then berate me for asking for money for baby food or nappies; getting all the people in the pub to agree they’d seen him give me money. “What had I spent it on? More drugs? Fucking junkie bitch.” Other peoples perceptions of me changed. They saw him as a good man trying to help someone who just abused his good nature.

And I put up with it. I put up with the physical abuse and the sexual abuse. Its not that I didn’t try to stop it; however anytime I tried to seek help it didn’t end up being help at all. Like the time I called the police after he had pushed a full filing cabinet down the stairs on top of me and the officer turned up and saw that I was a raging mess and couldn’t talk coherently due to fear and panic. And my abuser, who was now calm and friendly explained that I was crazy; a drug addict who had called the police for attention, and in the face of an officer of the law who was clearly unsympathetic and thought the worst, I couldn’t speak up. I couldn’t articulate in a rational way the way I was being treated. I just kept raging that he tried to kill me and the police needed to do something. So the police officer helped to carry the filing cabinet back up the stairs and told me to calm down else he’d arrest me. And then he left. He left me with the man who’d tried to kill me. He left me to face the wrath of a mad man.

Or there was the time that I told a friend and they told me to stop taking drugs and it would be OK. Only I knew this wasn’t about drugs. It was about control and power and I had none. Or the time I contacted Women’s Aid and all they did was give me a key worker who wanted to meet once a week for a chat, something that’s difficult to do when your abuser won’t let you go anywhere without them.

And when I had the baby that my abuser had tried to ensure would never be born; had tried to kick out of my stomach when I was 20 weeks pregnant. The baby that not once had he ever acknowledged or cared about or wanted. Despite this, he managed to keep up the show that he cared by organising a limousine to pick me up from the hospital. So that everyone told me how lucky I was to have a partner who cared so much.

The violence escalated. In ways I’d never imagined. He’d beat me whilst I was breastfeeding the baby. He put a cigarette out on my chest whilst I was breastfeeding so that the ember dropped onto my sons eyelid and burnt him. And it was around that time that he started to strangle me.

He’d strangle me whilst I was holding the baby; something would annoy him and he’d grab my throat and he would squeeze, sometimes stopping just long enough to allow me to remain conscious; occasionally until I collapsed completely. And I’d wake up in a heap on the floor with my son screaming underneath me and it was after a time that this happened that I had an epiphany. I had been strangled, beaten and abused until I didn’t know what to do and he had left the house to go to the pub. I walked into the kitchen and I saw a small but very sharp knife and I knew I was going to kill him; it wasn’t even a decision I made. It was just an acknowledgement of a fact.

Goodness knows why it took so long to happen but I suddenly realised that this relationship was heading only one way; he was going to kill me or I was going to kill him. And I wouldn’t be killing him in the heat of the moment; no, I was going to wait until he was passed out drunk and I was going to push this knife into his chest, into his heart. And I was going to repeat it; time and time again until he was dead. More than dead. Until the rage I felt from his continual abuse subsided.

And so that’s why I left. Something about that moment of clarity changed me somewhere deep inside. It terrified me. I was calmly and seriously considering murder and I actually could see myself doing it. And it wouldn’t be self defence; not in the conventional sense; I wouldn’t be doing it to protect myself in the heat of the moment. It would be planned and cold blooded and it would be self defence but only to stop him killing me; either by design or by accident, at some undefined point in the future it was going to happen. Because in that moment I knew with certainty that he would kill me if I didn’t kill him first and I wasn’t going to let that happen.

And it took many more months to get away from him. It took planning and returning to him once I’d left and it took every ounce of my depleted strength to finally break away. And the only reason I left was because it I was terrified. Not of what he would do to me, because I’d accepted my own death a long time before that, but because I was terrified of the person that he had turned me into. I was terrified that I could and would commit murder. That he had made me want to do this;I didn’t recognise the person that I had become. So that’s why I left; not to protect myself from the violence, but because I was terrified of what I’d become capable of.

My story into abuse can be read here: https://themadnessthatismylife.com/2015/01/23/imperceptible/

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Sticking plasters

29 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by in cold, Emotions, Life, Uncategorized

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I love the NHS. I pretty much live and breathe it. I work full time for the NHS and at weekends I work as a contractor for NHS Trusts on front line ambulances.  When I have a day off I am often to be found at the doctors or the dentists with one of the kids.  The NHS is awesome, always there when you need it.  Anyone who has been ill abroad will tell you that the NHS is something to be proud of.  If I am ill , I don’t have to think about whether I can afford to go to the hospital or the GP,  I can just go.  I might have to wait, the hospital or GP surgery may be a bit tired looking, but I know that I will be looked after. 
However good the NHS is though, it is not a lot of things; it isn’t social care, it isn’t a hotel and it most certainly isn’t a miracle worker.  Much as those who work in it would like to work miracles and cure each and every person who walks through the door. 

The NHS is stretched to breaking point everyday. There are a lot of reasons for this but some of them are easy to see. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I have been called to patients who aren’t really patients at all. They are desperately in need of help,  but not medical help. They need social care. Or social housing. They need their basic needs to be met,  but they do not really need an ambulance,  it’s just that there is no one else that they can call on a Sunday afternoon when they are at the end of their tether. When the loneliness hits hard and the prospect of not seeing a friendly face for another week is more than they can bear.  Or when caring for their loved one just becomes too heavy a burden to carry for another day, another night.  When they are desperate for a little bit of respite from the ceaseless pressure of responsibility for an old or dying loved one.

In the past this would have been dealt with, perhaps, by ringing another family member, or by a carer or a respite centre to give the family a break.  These days though, families are spread far apart and so with cuts to Local Authority budgets meaning that social care has been decimated,  there is no one to call. There is no relief, no respite in sight for a lot of these people; and so, in desperation, they call an ambulance.  And, in turn, because the ambulance crew can see that the family cannot cope, that it’s just too much,  we have no choice. We take them to hospital in the hope that given a few hours of space the family feel better, more able to continue in the thankless task of caring. We put a sticking plaster over society’s failure. 

And so there goes a hospital bed. A nurse,  a doctor, all of who’s time is taken up, instead of looking after the sick. And there goes that ‘protected’ NHS budget. The one that the government has pledged to increase. Only it’s not really an increase or protected at all, because now, instead of the money being spent on social care, and coming out of local authority budgets, it is coming out of the NHS one. The one that we hold so dear. And all the while the NHS covers up this deficit elsewhere, the worse it will get.

Then there are the lost souls. Those who drift, who sofa surf or sleep on park benches. Many of them mentally unwell but not acutely so; they don’t need a hospital, they just need somewhere to be warm; to be safe. Again there is no reason for them to be taken to hospital, but where else is there for them to go?  It takes a cold hearted person to leave a person on a park bench when you know they have nowhere else to go and it is minus 3 centigrade outside. And so yet again we, the ambulance crew, paid for by the NHS spend our time and your money phoning around charities, forgotten contacts in our patients phone, in the hope that we can find them a warm bed for the night. And if not, due to cuts in social housing, there being by no easy access hostels, we take them to the warm waiting room of the hospital.  And as we sit there sticking plasters on the plight of the homeless, another cardiac arrest call goes unanswered. Another person dies. 

Other patients are just too old; their bodies far too weak.  Sometimes it happens slowly, other times it is quick.  I recently went to a patient who was nearly 100 years old and barely lucid.  Struggling to even open his eyes; despite that, there was nothing significantly wrong with him; if I had to hazard a guess (and as I am helping to treat we have to do an educated one), I’d probably say it was just his time to go.  His body was just worn out.  He was nearly 100! But his daughter insisted he had been fine until he got pneumonia previously and was taken in hospital for a month.  Obviously the hospital had made him ill; before that he had been fine. Before that he had lived alone; was fine. There was no point telling her that maybe it was just his time to go.  That he had lived longer than most people, that the hospital that she was blaming by for the state of her father, probably was to blame, only not in the way that she thought; because years ago, her dad wouldn’t have been taken to hospital to be treated for the pneumonia, that nearly killed him. He would likely have just died. At home. Peacefully in his bed. Instead we dragged him off to A & E,  for more interventions. To prolong his life further such that it is.  And when he isn’t restored back to full health, no doubt his daughter will claim that the hospital killed him.  Because blame, it would seem is easier than the truth; that sometimes we just need to allow people to die.  Not play God and attempt miracles. We all have to die sometime. We all, as individuals and the NHS just need to learn to let them. 

The NHS cannot put a sticking plaster on the whole of society. As an ambulance crew friend once told me: if you just need a plaster, you don’t need us. 

If you’ve enjoyed this blog come find me on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/themadnessthatismylife/ or follow me on Twitter @101madness

A tiny fraction. 

07 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by in Emotions, Friends, love, Relationships

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I went to see Justin yesterday. I actually didn’t want to. I was terrified. Silly really, given that I’ve been around dead people before, I know that they can’t harm us. But I have never seen a person 3 weeks after they have died, and certainly not after the circumstances in which Justin died. 

You see he died of what they assume was a heroin overdose in someone’s flat. That somebody, didn’t call the emergency services, instead they panicked. They set about pretending like it didn’t happen, they cleaned and tidied and they left it 2 days. 48 hours. They did nothing for 2 days. And then they called the police and ambulance. By then it was obviously far too late. In all honesty it probably was by the time they realised that he was dead. 
Anyway, in my head I couldn’t really get it sorted out. Despite being close to Justin I’d not seen him for months. He lived hundreds of miles away. We’d spoken via text and Facebook and had phone calls but I didn’t see him regularly so I was used to him not actually being there. That made it hard to register that I’d never see him again. That he was gone. Forever. And then the circumstances of his death haunted me. 48 hours. That’s a long time in death. And three weeks had passed since then. I didn’t really build a picture in my head of how he would look, but I imagined that in death he would not be my Justin. The man I have known for nearly 2 decades the man I cared for, who looked after me, who saved me despite not being able to save himself. My mind played nasty tricks on me and it made me scared of someone that I loved. 

Anyway Justin’s eldest son was the one who made me go. He was insistent that he had to go and see him and he couldn’t be persuaded otherwise. And so after a few phone calls the mortuary said they would let us visit before he got taken to the funeral home (who coincidentally charge an awful lot to go visit your loved ones). We booked a slot and I picked up the boy and his mum and we went together to the hospital and I was nervous and terrified and didn’t really know what to expect. 

The lady at the hospital was amazing. Caring and loving and sympathetic. She took his son through and his mum and I sat sobbing and holding each other admitting that we didn’t want to do this. And then his son came out and instead of crying he was smiling. He called us in and told us it was ok. And so we all went in together and the minute I saw him I knew i had done the right thing. 

He looked like he was sleeping. So much so that I almost imagined I could see him breathe. He looked peaceful and calm. Most of all he looked like Justin. And we all laughed at the fact they had clearly taken his dentures out which we’d discussed on the journey there that he looked like an old man without them. And we talked to him and admired the lack of grey in his hair, pondering whether he’d dyed it. We joked about the fact he’d accidentally shaven half an eyebrow off before he’d died and it hasn’t grown back. He told him he should have shaved for our visit and we told him off for leaving us. 

And it was a whole bunch of things; funny, sad, heartbreaking, comforting, reassuring and cathartic.  None of which is how I expected to feel; but the one thing it wasn’t was scary or distressing. And it helped me to heal. Not a lot, but a tiny fraction. Enough to let me know that in time I will not only feel the acuteness of grief, but the warmth of the light and love he gave to me. That the things we did together and laughed at have not changed in value just because he has gone. And I am glad that I went. 

Crushed. 

21 Monday Dec 2015

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Crushed. I am crushed. 

The grief comes in waves, great big tsunamis that don’t just knock me over, they throw me off my feet with a staggering ferociousness, ripping chunks out of me. 

To the outsider perhaps, I have too much grief. Too many tears. But they just cannot understand the connection that we had. The shit that we went through.they don’t know the times that I just had a feeling that he needed me, and I tracked him down, sometimes just to check that he was actually alive. 

Then today, out of the blue, the ending I half knew was coming but fought at every opportunity materialised . And the finality is almost too much to bear. It’s not fair. How come so many get to live, hateful and cruel and yet you, you who loved so much despite all the reasons not to, weren’t given that chance. 

And I’m raging at the insanity of a world where evil lives and kindness dies. Where you don’t reap what you sow. The randomness of it all is baffling.

And it terrifies me, because there was never anything I could do.  And I tried. I honestly did. Me; who’s job it is to help save addicts, albeit not personally, but through my work; I couldn’t even save you. And if I can’t do that knowing how much I cared, I don’t know how I can help others. 

But I know I need to try. I know that you would want to give anyone the chance to be free of addiction. And if I can’t save you maybe I can help someone else. Maybe it will be their turn even though it was never yours. 

You told me so many times how proud you were of me, but I want you to know that I am proud of you too; for being you despite of all the pain. For living in the face of despair and continuing to love. 

Most of all I want you to know that no matter what happened I love you, in our own fucked up way we loved each other despite not being a couple. Despite everything I hope you know I still cared.  

Elephant in the room.

02 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by in Emotions, Friends, Relationships, Uncategorized

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Death is nothing at all… That’s a line from a popular choice of readings at many of the  funeral services that I have attended. The thing is,  death is a big thing. It’s that elephant in the room, the thing we all know is coming, and yet we try our best not to acknowledge.  We ignore it,  we try not to even speak it’s name, we say someone has passed on gone to meet their maker, become an angel. Very rarely do we say someone is dead, it’s euphemisms all the way.

The thing is, we need to deal with Death. We need to accept it,  after all,  as a friend of mine says, good health is just the slowest possible way to die!  It’s an unfortunate truth. No matter how much we don’t like it, it is one thing we can guarantee. 

I have recently been faced with Death and the dying fairly frequently.  I’ve been working on the ambulances and have seen a lot of ill people. Most of these are old people,  people who have lived full and varied lives,  and are proud, strong and fascinating human beings.  All too many of them have been reduced to the remnants of the people that they once were. Some may be unsteady on their feet,  and so have fallen and injured themselves, or just don’t have the strength to get up. Others may just be weak with age or exhausted from breathing or heart conditions,  many have dementia. 

But it’s not all elderly people who die. My 7 year old son came home today with news of a school friend who died at the weekend. Younger people die too, no matter how much we want to ignore it. And it’s heart wrenching and horribly sad,  and doesn’t bear thinking about,  but think about it we should. 

In my mind, death shouldn’t be taboo. It should be a subject that we talk about, without dread, we plan so many things in our lives, but very few people plan for their deaths. We leave this most important part of life to our family and friends,  people who, with the best will in the world are the least likely to be in the frame of mind to make rational, life or death decisions. 

My Nana was probably the person who I have been closest to that has died. I loved my Nana fiercely,  and she loved us all fiercely back. None of us would ever want her to be in pain or distressed.  She was very ill,  she had been fairly I’ll for a long time. She had COPD and was on oxygen constantly, but she was still firing on all cylinders and bossy as hell!

Then one day, she got a chest infection,  and was admitted to hospital. Despite treatment, she didn’t improve.  The Dr’s wanted to withdraw treatment and in that moment,  I would have done anything to save her. Even in the poor health that she was in, I wasn’t ready to let her die. It wasn’t about her. I was selfishly thinking of myself, i didn’t think that my Nana was suffering and would hate to be like this. I just felt that I could not let her go. Luckily I was able to cry it out,  talk to my friends and family and ultimately, it wasn’t up to me to let her go. Probably a good job,  as I don’t think I would have had the strength. I’d want them to keep her alive, not for her but for me. My Nana slipped away quietly in her sleep early one morning soon after.

The funny thing is that after she died I felt relief. Not that she was dead,  but that she was gone without suffering:  she never lost her mind to dementia, or her independence. She died after a short illness and was peaceful. It took my mum and aunt a lot to allow them to withdraw treatment but ultimately it was the right thing to do. Nana would have hated to be a burden and if she had survived she wouldn’t have had the life she was used to.

And that’s why it is important that we face that elephant in the room, that we talk about death and dying, and give our loved ones an idea of what we want or don’t want to be done to keep us alive. It’s not fair to leave a grieving loved one to make decisions on your life or death completely in the dark. It’s not fair on them,  and it’s certainly not fair on you. As humans we are ultimately selfish.  We don’t like pain,  and the pain of losing someone we think we can’t live without is too much. Some people can’t put that aside and think of the other person.  And that says nothing about them,  and more about being human.

So we should all make our feelings clear. Talk about them,  write them down.  Be unequivocal.  Speak about death, and life,  and the conditions in which we would choose death over life. How much should we be prepared to let Dr’s intervene to prolong our life?  If we lose our ability to choose the best for us,  who do we trust to choose it instead. What do we want done with our bodies when we die, are we leaving them to medical science?  Being buried, cremated?  How do we feel about organ donation?  All of us,  none of us, or only some parts? All of these things are important, they mean that we know what will happen to us, and it takes the guilt and pain and decision making away from a loved one who is in an impossible situation. 

So I’ll start it now: if I get dementia,  or have a stroke or any other condition that means I have no mental capacity and no hope for recovery,  I would like treatment to be withdrawn.  I would like my family with me and I’d like to die. If I am able to,  I would like any of my organs to be donated. I don’t mind if I’m buried or cremated but I’d like a grave that people can visit if they want to. And most of all,  I want my family to know that it is my choice and not theirs. There is no guilt,  it’s what I would want.